


They've All Gone to Look for America (The Doctor's Note Remix)

by pocky_slash



Category: Doctor Who (2005), West Wing
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor always seems to know when the Bartlet senior staff needs a break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They've All Gone to Look for America (The Doctor's Note Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [krabapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krabapple/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Doctor For America](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3065) by krabapple. 



> Thanks to my absolutely lovely beta team, who swooped in at the last minute to catch my mistakes.

_The Sixth Moon of Bisst, 67th Epoch_

Josh was staring out the window thoughtfully.

Josh did a lot of staring out the window, these days. More than he probably should, given the number of Important Issues he was working on at any given moment. But there had been something in the air, recently, like electricity. Part of it, he was sure, was due to Leo's new angle--"Let Bartlet Be Bartlet." Josh liked that, he liked the idea of focusing on helping instead of focusing on winning. He liked the idea of going out and getting things done.

But that was a different type of electricity. This was... something else entirely.

It was late. It was dark. There wasn't anything to see outside, really.

Or there wasn't until he heard the noise.

It was like running a lawnmower over a piano covered in molasses. It was like slicing a log in two with a chainsaw while underwater. It was like making a milkshake in a blender full of cotton wool.

It was a sound that Josh had convinced himself he'd only dreamed.

He might as well have been dreaming again--he didn't consciously get to his feet, but before he knew it, he was standing in a corridor, face to face with a lanky kid in his twenties wearing a bow-tie and a tweed jacket.

"Sorry," Josh said, coming back to himself. "Sorry about that. I thought I heard--it doesn't matter." A beat. The kid wasn't moving. And something about him... it wasn't kid-like. He seemed older. He was smiling too much. "I'm sorry, can I help you find someone?"

"Josh!" the other guy said. "I think I've already found who I'm looking for, don't you?"

Josh was about to tell him he was crazy and maybe call the Secret Service, when he looked at the guy. He really, really looked at him, locked eyes, and suddenly he was a kid again, in red footie pajamas, watching Joanie slip out her bedroom window with a stranger.

 _"I'll be right back. Mom and Dad don't have to know, okay?"_

"You're... you look...." he stuttered.

"New face! Sorry about that, happens sometimes," the guy said. "Anyway, I was in the neighborhood and thought--well, I was actually looking for this place in New York City in the 1970s that made a really excellent pizza, but New York, DC, 1970s, 2000s, it's all the same, right?"

Josh was staring again.

"The point is," the guy continued, "I thought it was long past time for you to take a bit of a trip. My friends are off honeymooning, so I've got a bit of time."

"You always said... you said I was too young," Josh said in a daze.

"Yeah, well, you grew up, didn't you? Not a good thing--I really don't recommend it--but I thought, while I'm here...." He raised an eyebrow.

"I--" Josh tried to shake himself out of his stupor. He'd convinced himself those were dreams, he'd spent most of his life sure that he had imagined his sister taking nighttime adventures in a big blue box with a cheerfully crazy man. "I can't just leave," he finally said. "I have--my job, it's important. I work for--for people who are important. There's this Town Hall meeting tomorrow--I have to be there."

The guy--the _Doctor_ shook his head, almost sadly.

"You have no idea," he said quietly. Then, like someone flipped a switch back to manic, he was smiling again. "But! Time machine, remember? Just a little trip and we'll get you back here by tomorrow morning, honest."

Josh hesitated, but he felt like a child again, willing and eager to follow the man who had performed such astonishing tricks before borrowing his sister for the night.

"Joanie was never late, was she?" the Doctor asked.

*

Josh spent a night listening to the most beautiful music he had ever heard, trying food in colors and tastes that couldn't have appeared in nature on Earth, and, of course, running. He watched the sunrise over craggy turquoise cliffs and then spent untold hours exploring the inside of the big blue box that had haunted his childhood dreams.

He fell into bed two hours after he left the White House, exhausted, but with a mind that was clearer than it had been since he followed Leo to New Hampshire. He was ready for whatever the world was going to throw at him, starting with the Town Hall at the Newseum the next night.

The Doctor's smile was more bitter than sweet as he waved one last time and then stepped back into his box. The noise that used to haunt Josh's dreams lulled him to sleep.

***

 _Pat's Diner, 1971_

Toby caught the ball as it bounced off of the window and sighed.

Writer's block.

He should have been feeling triumphant after his impromptu lecture to the protesters yesterday. Josh was still bragging about it to everyone they saw, as if he'd written it himself. Sam was in a better mood, though Toby wasn't entirely sure what had been going on with him in the first place and figured it was best to leave well enough alone. Sam would tell him eventually. He always did.

Toby had been in good form that morning, volleying quips back and forth with CJ and making a few key points in the morning briefings. But he sat down to write and....

He threw the ball again and caught it on the bounce.

He felt itchy under his skin. There was something on the horizon. It had been too quiet lately. It was always quiet before the big ones hit. Weeks of quiet and then "I think we should get divorced" or "We just don't think you have the right personality to gel with the rest of the team."

But thinking about the quiet wasn't going to get this speech written, this or the twelve others he and Sam were juggling between them for the rest of the week. Pie would help, though. Pie always helped.

He got up from his desk and wandered out into the bullpen. He waved vaguely as Ginger asked after him and muttered hellos to people who grunted in his direction in the halls. He waited dutifully on line in the mess, only to discover they were out of pie.

"How can you be out of pie?" he asked. The woman on the other side of the counter shrugged.

"Everyone wants pie today," she said.

"I don't care if everyone wants pie," Toby said. " _I_ want pie and--"

"There's a lovely place I know, if you want really good pie."

Toby froze, mid-diatribe, and turned around. There was a kid in a tweed jacket and a bow tie rocking back and forth on his heels. He had an English accent.

"How far is this place?" Toby asked gruffly. The woman behind the counter went back to re-stocking the fruit baskets. Toby would have another, _stronger_ word with her later. For now, he needed to see to his immediate needs.

"Not far," said Bow Tie. "Well, no, it's rather far. Incredibly far, actually, depending on how you look at it and whether you're accounting for distance in _time_ and--"

"Look," Toby said, "do you have pie or don't you?"

Bow Tie smiled. There was something about it that was kind of unnerving.

"Come with me," he said.

Toby followed him. He wasn't sure why.

*

The Doctor--that was Bow Tie's name, as it turned out, if you could count it as a name--took him for pie. Well, first he tried to explain time and space travel, talking at a speed that was hard for even Toby to understand, but then, at a tiny roadside diner in Illinois in the 1970s, he soothed the shock with the best pie Toby had ever eaten. After the pie was Gettysburg and FDR's first inaugural. They saw the "Man in the Arena" and Patrick Henry, Ancient Greece and James Monroe.

Somewhere in the middle, they ended up on a planet where the people were puce and gave amazing speeches in place of sporting events. They also didn't take kindly to people eating popcorn while they spoke and that part had included a lot more running than Toby usually liked, but the Doctor made up for it by stopping by Pat's for more pie.

The Doctor left him in a storage closet by the mess about an hour after they'd gone.

"Intentions count for something, Toby," the Doctor said. "Sometimes people lie for their own good."

It was a non sequitur, but Toby barely noticed. He waved at the Doctor dismissively and rushed to his office. His brain was buzzing with ideas and the twelve speeches that lay ahead suddenly seemed like a challenge, not a burden.

***

 _The Great Conjoined Union of Alltallta, Cycle 200_

It wasn't the first closed door meeting CJ hadn't been invited to. It wouldn't be the last. Her security clearance just wasn't that high--it didn't have to be, after all. They let her weigh in on policy much more frequently than they had to and she was grateful for that, really, but....

She was tired of walking into closed doors, was the long and short of it.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed, fingering her necklace and staring out the dark window. It was stupid--it wasn't like her job wasn't _monumentally difficult_ to begin with. She didn't know why she wanted more responsibility, more accountability, more of a voice when she was already only sleeping four hours a night if she was lucky. She should have been happy that there were times when she could breathe and relax and let someone else do the work.

But that had never been her style, had it? There was more she could be doing to help and she wouldn't feel completely at ease until she knew she was doing everything she could to contribute.

Leo had told her to go home. She probably should have. There was a nice bottle of wine and a bubble bath just waiting for a somewhat early night, but she was waiting until they were through, just to make sure nothing came up.

The halls should have been empty, but when she looked back at the doorway to her office, there was a guy standing there, smiling. He wasn't wearing an ID badge and he didn't look familiar.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Claudia Jean Cregg!" the guy said. He hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and smiled, shaking his head. "I can't believe it! Could you stand up? You look taller in pictures!"

CJ stood without even thinking about it, her mind still puzzling over the sudden appearance of a crazy person in her office.

"Excuse me," she said, and he clapped his hands together.

"Right, right, of course," he said. "We haven't met yet. I'm--well, I'm the Doctor. You can call me the Doctor." He held out his hand. CJ shook it slowly.

"Hello, Doctor," she said. "I'm CJ. And I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to be here."

"Well, you're right with that," the Doctor said. "We're already late. But, time machine, you know. I can make up the time. Well. Probably. We'll get there eventually. Wouldn't want to miss it!"

"Get _where_?" CJ asked, trying to track the conversation and wondering if there was a subtle way to call for the Secret Service. She was sure he had said the words "time machine."

"Oh, a wonderful ceremony," he said. "You'll love it. But come on, now, we should definitely be going."

"And why should I go with you?" she asked.

The Doctor froze, the almost awkward energy from before bleeding out of him. He turned around slowly, smiling like he was in on the best secret in the universe and he was about to share it.

"Because, where we're going, there will be so many doors open to you that you'll entirely forget about that one down there." He jerked his thumb towards the Oval Office. "I can show you things that will remind you why you're doing what you're doing. I can show you things that mean more than you can imagine. What do you say?"

It should have sounded dangerous and cheesy and like the sort of awful pick-up line that drunk businessmen tried on her at seedy bars, but instead, CJ found herself following him out into the hallway and into a big blue box that had appeared sometime after her last press briefing.

It took her thirty seconds to completely forget about the meeting she wasn't invited to.

*

They watched a recreation of a treaty that bound two warring factions of a lush, green planet together. There were songs and speeches and stories and CJ laughed and cried and cheered. During the break in the ceremony, the Doctor uncovered some sort of embezzlement conspiracy with added scary monsters and then there was an awful lot of running, but they still managed to catch the end.

The sun rose over the amphitheater, making everything glow gold as the entire audience surged to their feet, crying and cheering. CJ clung to that memory as she hugged the Doctor one last time and stepped out onto the sidewalk outside her apartment.

"Don't lose that, Claudia Jean Cregg," the Doctor said. "There's good in the universe to be done. Don't let anyone stop you from doing it."

She went to sleep that night with the Alltallta song echoing in her ears and her heart.

***

 _Adventitia, Gruteage 51 Plus_

The night before a debate, Sam liked to get jazzed up. He liked to re-read notes and theorize answers and imagine every possible outcome. He liked to go out to bars with Josh and Toby and CJ and talk quietly and shout loudly and get all of the jitters out of his system so he could be there for the President entirely when he took the stage.

He couldn't really do any of that the night before the Ritchie debate, though. Josh and Toby and CJ had plans and Sam had to book a ticket to California.

He didn't know why they were sending him. CJ was local, too, and making a detour to get some lunatics to shut up about a dead candidate was not his idea of a good pre-game for a debate. It was grunt work. They could have assigned a junior staffer and let Sam ride with the rest of the team, but they had decided he should do this instead.

He loved working for the President. He loved working with Toby and Josh and CJ and Leo. He loved his job. But sometimes he felt like the people around him ran hot and cold on him. He went from favored son to comic relief sometimes within the same hour and he couldn't help but feel like the issues kept falling to the side right when he thought they were important. But who was he to complain? He had the least political experience of anyone working on the senior staff and he knew that sometimes politics meant sacrificing your ideals.

He didn't like sacrificing his ideals. It just made him so... tired.

He wasn't tired now, though. He was pacing and thinking and about the ten word answer for defense and wondering if it was a bad idea to go down to the bar and have a couple drinks. He vetoed the bar and decided that beer from the fridge was a better idea, but that presented a whole new problem.

There was a blue garden shed in front of his fridge.

He couldn't have missed it. It had to have been there when he came in, but he certainly didn't _remember_ it. He would have seen a blue shed that decided to park itself in front of his pantry. Right?

He approached it cautiously. There was definitely a door in front. Before he could open it, though, it swung out and a man stepped into his kitchen.

"Oh, you're here!" the man said. He waved a metal object with a green light at the end. "I was going to pop around a bit, try and find you, but it took her three tries to get the right day, so I thought it best to wait. Didn't want to be running around Washington all night! Lots of people here who aren't too pleased with me. In this time too, I think, but definitely in the past. As if all of that was my fault. I'm the Doctor, by the way."

Sam blinked.

"Hi," he said. Not his brightest moment.

"Well, get in, then," the man--the Doctor--said. "Lots to see and still need to get you back in time to meet your destiny."

"Destiny?" Sam said.

"You're wearing that? Well, never mind. Lots of choices in the wardrobe."

He yanked Sam into the shed by his Princeton t-shirt.

Sam never did get that beer.

*

They consulted with the president of a planet that Sam had never heard of in a time that didn't make any sense to him. Sam listened and weighed in with his opinion and watched the president make hard decisions. It was a lot like work, but something about it was freeing. Afterwards they walked through the square. They watched people, they helped people, and they listened.

They spent an hour running from something like the police, but the Doctor assured him it was all a misunderstanding.

They returned to the TARDIS and Sam spent a moment staring out towards the sea before allowing himself to be ushered back inside.

"Forget about politics," the Doctor said. Sam was in his Princeton t-shirt again, back in his kitchen. "Do what's right. The rest is easy."

Sam doubted that, but as an ear-splitting noise echoed through his kitchen, California didn't seem like such a fool's errand anymore.

***

 _The TARDIS, a simpler time_

Leo surveyed the empty convention hall. It was nearly silent, save for the occasional scratch of a waste bin being pulled along the floor after the cleaning crew.

The end of an era. The start of a new one. He wasn't sure he was ready for it.

He'd dreamed, in his youth, of being a candidate one day. When he was young, drugs and drink didn't matter the way they did by the time his career started going, the way they did now. He turned to what he was good at--greasing the wheels, paving the way. He wasn't sure he was the kind of person he'd want as the face of anything by that time, and working for his best friend, someone he trusted, someone he genuinely believed in....

It was the last job he'd expected to have. If he had another, he never would have chosen this.

He heard the footsteps behind him. He half expected Josh, eager and willing to start planning the next stage of the campaign, or maybe Jed or Matt.

He didn't expect the young man in the tweed jacket, but one smile and one look at those eyes and he knew the identity of his visitor.

"Did you know about this?" he asked He gestured vaguely, let the Doctor take from it what he would--Jed, his own sudden candidacy, the future of the country. He knew the Doctor wouldn't tell him, probably. The man hated giving away the game. Space-time continuum Leo's ass, he thought the Doctor just liked being the smartest person in the room.

He knew what that felt like.

"Some," the Doctor allowed. "There are a lot of planets out there, you know, with a lot of history. I knew the good bits." Something in his smile made Leo think he knew the bad bits just as well. Leo knew he should be angry for being kept in the dark, for not having a warning about the trials of the past few years, but he and Jed had spent enough time listening and exploring and running for Leo to understand that wasn't how the Doctor worked.

"So, what are you doing hanging out in an empty convention center?" Leo asked, smiling at the young man. God, he looked so young. It wasn't fair--all these years had past and the Doctor looked younger while he and Jed had aged nearly beyond recognition. "You missed all the excitement. And the vendors. I know how much you like excitement and shops."

"Oh, I watched for a bit," the Doctor said, waving his hand. "Took a hat and a sign for a while. It was a nice hat. I don't know why no one lets me keep my hats. I think I make them look good."

Leo rolled his eyes.

"But, to answer your question, I thought I'd see how you were. If you wanted to take a little spin. Looks like things are about to get exciting again--and exciting is good, but best to take a vacation while you still can, I think."

Leo thought back to his youth and shook his head, smiling sadly. "I don't think I'm up for spending my last vacation running, but thanks all the same," he said.

"It's not always running," the Doctor said in a tone that implied he was very much aware that it was mostly running. "Anywhere, any time. Entirely up to you. We could spend a few hours on Space Florida, if you want."

Leo was going to wave the Doctor away, but something made him stop and consider. He didn't know how to say it, how to ask, so he just looked at the Doctor imploringly and willed him to know, just as he had always known back then.

The Doctor nodded and then reached out and squeezed Leo's shoulder.

"I had a feeling," he said. "I know just the thing for it."

*

Leo spent the evening sitting on a long flat stone outside of the TARDIS, watching the shoreline far below, where he was exploring and laughing and running, always two steps behind the Doctor with Jed on his heels.

They went back to the 18th Century, back to the Trest Waterfall, back to Barcelona, chasing their younger selves from afar, always just out of sight. Leo's heart swelled with affection, with nostalgia, with gratitude for the ability to go back to this time when his eyes were open and universe lay before him. The Doctor didn't seem to want the night to end, and even though Leo knew he'd do his best to hit his mark, that it would seem like no time had passed at all to anyone in Washington, his new duties weighed on him. When the Doctor finally landed outside of Leo's hotel, he hesitated before opening the door to the TARDIS.

"You did good, Leo," he said quietly. "You've always done good. Even when you're not sure of it yourself... you've always done good. And I'm lucky to have known you."

He hugged Leo for a long time, and when Leo finally departed and turned to watch the TARDIS disappear, the engines sounded slower, softer. They sounded like goodbye.

Leo stayed until the last of the noise had faded into the night.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] They've All Gone to Look for America (The Doctor's Note Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1558817) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)




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